Russian composers contributed greatly to the genre of programmatic symphonic works. Although many were initially attracted to it by Spanish inspirations, one reason for the genre’s eventual massive popularity was that it gave the composers a popular musical form to incorporate not only native Russian tunes and harmonic structures, but also to focus on other […]

There are three central issues at stake in Ordinary Fascism (Obyknovennyi fashizm, 1965): the return of fascism, the exposure of parallels between Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism, and the Soviet Union’s effacement of Jews from Holocaust representation. At the time the film was released, recycled images of Nazi crimes in previous documentaries, newsreels, and newspapers had made warnings […]

Khrushchev’s reorientation of Soviet life during the cultural thaw of the late 1950s and early 1960s shifted official representations of Soviet people to focus on the more humanizing aspects of life and the everyday: the new Soviet citizen may be a worker, but work no longer defined personhood. Unlike in the Stalinist period, where photography […]

Alexandrinsky Theater / Александринский театр Alexandrinsky.ru Ticket Office: 9:00 – 18:00 Monday through Friday ~1500 rubles per person (for good seats) Swan Lake was not the first ballet I had been to, but it was definitely the best. Before I came to Russia, one of the things that I absolutely had to do was to go […]

Much as the romantic ideology attached to the “Wild West” captivated the imagination of the United States in the second half of the 19th century, the primal beauty, proud warriors, and wild culture of the Caucasus regions fascinated Russian writers and heavily influenced Russian literature for centuries. However, this fascination was accompanied by years of […]

Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov opens with a particularly unsatisfying note. The fictional narrator declares in his “From the Author” that the hero of the book is Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov. Quickly following this declaration is a confession: “To me he is noteworthy, but I decidedly doubt that I shall succeed in proving it to the reader” (Dostoevsky 3). […]

The history of Soviet music cannot be discussed without mentioning the Decree of 1948 and the anti-Formalist campaign that followed. Dmitri Shostakovich was one of a select number of Soviet composers who were denounced by this powerful document. After its publication, several of Shostakovich’s compositions were banned from performance, he temporarily lost his job at […]

The function of violent death is complex in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov: it serves as the driving focus of the work, calls into question the many characters’ agency and morality, and provides a forceful resolution. At the forefront of the novel is the murder of Fyodor Pavlovich by one of his sons. Parricide is the […]

Russia is famous for miserably cold winters. This means that, in winter, Russians must stay at home being miserable, right? Not at all! For Russians, winters are part of their national heritage and there is arguably no greater beauty and no better time to get out and be active than during a day of “мороз […]